In the video surveillance industry much focus has been on cameras, detection hardware, video transmission, and video analytics software. Other than the development of very expensive video analytics software, little attention has been given to improving the fundamentals of video monitoring. One of the biggest challenges for effective monitoring rests with fatigue of the person or persons monitoring the video images, resulting in loss of comprehension of the images being watched. The industry's current approaches to this problem include frequent rest breaks, rotation of monitoring personnel when adequate resources are available, and adding alarms or analytics software to alert the monitoring agent or agents of special events.
The performance of current analytics software is far from ideal. These computer software products are supposed to have some level of “intelligence” to identify threats from the video images and alert the monitoring individual or individuals when those threats arise, but they often fall short, giving excessive amount of false alarms. Perhaps the biggest draw back is its expense, which can be as high as $10,000 per camera, when all costs are taken into consideration.
Adding sensors such as motion detectors to alert the monitoring agent is helpful, but there are many situations where adding such sensors are not possible or cost effective. Further, sensors such as those for outdoor motion detection are notorious for giving false alarms.
For the vast majority of surveillance monitoring situations, the burden of effective monitoring still rests squarely on the people serving as monitoring agents. Moreover, except for extra high security applications such as those for the military, there are insufficient personnel available to frequently rotate the monitoring agents.
The most practical prior art approach is to allow the monitoring individuals to take frequent breaks. However, this approach creates its own set of problems. When a monitoring agent is on break, the screens are either not being watched, creating vulnerability, or a new monitoring agent must be available. Having extra personnel to cover breaks adds cost and creates staff scheduling problems. In addition, it takes the new agent time to become familiar with the scenes being watched, which may reduce his or her effectiveness.